HAMPTON — It was just a moment shared with former prep heroes, has-beens and never-weres, maybe a few low-level college jocks here or there and plenty of beer bellies and creaking joints, but it meant a lot to Hank Morgan.

When you advertise yourself as the coach of an organization that puts community pride ahead of everything else, getting a pat on the back from the locals for a job well-done means the world. Morgan, the coach of the (finally) reigning Coastal Plain League champion Peninsula Pilots, had that experience during a recent adult-league softball game at Briarfield Park in Hampton.

As Morgan dug into the batter's box for the first time in the game, the opposing pitcher stepped off the rubber, called timeout, turned toward his middle infielders and yelled in excitement.

"He said, 'Hey, man, it's him. I told you. It's the coach of the Pilots,'" said Morgan, who led Peninsula to a CPL title for the first time in the Pilots' first 14 seasons in the college summer wooden-bat league.

The pitcher turned back to face Morgan, congratulating him for a great 2013 season and expressing how much fun the pitcher had watching the Pilots last season.

"That was pretty neat," Morgan said. "I didn't realize the impact it made on some people."

When Peninsula opens its 15th CPL season Tuesday night at Wilson, and at home Wednesday night at War Memorial Stadium in Hampton, Morgan will try make the guys from the neighborhood proud again, while hopefully helping a new group of college kids raise the Petitt Cup trophy above their heads in August. He'll have some familiar faces around in the quest to repeat.

Peninsula is slated to have 10 players back from last summer when it opens the season. That's not including another player — outfielder Josh Eldridge from Old Dominion — who is back after hitting .299 for Peninsula in the 2012 season, but who didn't play for the Pilots last season.

Brandon Vick, a Warwick High graduate who pitched five innings last August in Peninsula's decisive 2-1 win against Columbia in Game 2 of the best-of-3 CPL championship series, is among a few players who will return for a third season for Peninsula.

He just finished his junior year at Longwood. He'll be one of several players on the field June 7 at War Memorial Stadium when Pilots from last season's team are awarded rings and a championship banner is raised before a game against Morehead City.

Morgan didn't use his team's first championship in its fourth appearance in the CPL finals as a carrot to lure players for this season's team. Instead, he stuck with the same formula he's always used – come to Hampton, get treated right, play ball.

"We still promote, 'Come play for us, we'll take good care of your kids, here's how and here's what we're doing with them,' " said Morgan, whose team will host a game June 29 against Team USA — a repeat of an exhibition Peninsula played last season. "I feel like winning the championship was an immense amount of fun and very satisfying, but it's a byproduct of what we've been doing."

Morgan has always espoused the virtues of pitching and defense first when constructing his team. His philosophy was the same this year when he put his pitching and infield-heavy group together, but Peninsula succeeded last season by getting runners on base, taking advantage of opportunities, situational hitting and displaying speed on the basepaths, in addition to quality pitching and defense.

Peninsula led the 14-team CPL last season in on-base percentage (.364), sacrifice bunts (63) and fewest strikeouts by hitters (431). It also scored the second-most runs (121) in the league, had the second-most steals (121), third-best batting average (.259), hit into the third-fewest double plays (eight) and had the fifth-fewest errors (78).

The Pilots fashioned the league's sixth-best team earned run average (3.46) using a "piggyback" pitching approach Morgan will employ again this season, where a starter is on a 55-to-60 pitch count before giving way to a reliever, hopefully for 30-to-35 additional pitches.

Not even a penchant for giving up extra base hits – only Petersburg surrendered more extra base hits last season than Peninsula (111; league-most 16 triples and tied for the league-most 26 home runs) – could derail the Pilots. After years of coming close and stubbing their toe in the postseason, Morgan's overall strategy worked for the Pilots.

Why change now?

"When we were finishing runner-up … we didn't really do anything different," Morgan said. "I think just being true to the process, true to who we are, War Memorial Stadium and the community — it's just cool to know we can win a championship just being ourselves."

As trainers carted Jerry Ugokwe off the Unitas Stadium field last November, William and Mary football coach Jimmye Laycock couldn't avoid the thought: His team's entire starting offensive line, a group with so much promise and youth, was wiped out by injury.

Robbie Babb posted his third and fourth victories of the season with a clean sweep of twin 30-lap Modified races, the featured events of Saturday evening’s NASCAR Whelen All-American Series program at Langley Speedway.